Archive for May 1st, 2017

Monday, May 1st, 2017

I’m not a big fan of school or college reunions although I loved my time at the institutions.

You can count on one hand the number I’ve attended. I know the amount of work and time involved with determining the topics, gathering the right speakers, planning the dinners and satellite events and marketing them all to gather a crowd.

I attended select parts of a recent one.

I can understand why Truman Capote wrote “Answered Prayers,” the tell-all book that destroyed his relationship with best friends such as Babe Paley and Gloria Vanderbilt. He was angry. So was I.

Meryl Streep as Miranda Priestly in “The Devil Wears Prada”

However apart from the obvious differences between us, such as audience size and prominence, the first draft of this post, [torn up now], and Truman’s book differ in that mine wasn’t about others’ secrets; it covered snarky or off-the-wall comments of former classmates. And it didn’t give sufficient credit to the generosity of the couple who throw elegant dinner parties for class members and their partners to celebrate these occasions or the speakers at the discussion I attended.

Andrea Thompson, in an article on livescience.com, wrote “Bad Memories Stick Better Than Good.” She quoted Elizabeth Kensinger, Boston College, who reviewed research on emotional memories. “‘It really does matter whether [an event is] positive or negative in that most of the time, if not all of the time, negative events tend to be remembered in a more accurate fashion than positive events,’ Kensinger said.”

What inspires people to say thoughtless, nasty things at events such as reunions? Do you attend them? Do you remember the bad parts more than the good or is it all good?